


This House Was Never Empty

by Lilithisbitter



Series: Come at Once if Convenient Fanfiction Collection [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Challenge Response, Come at once round vii, Hand Jobs, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Sad with a Happy Ending, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10354350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilithisbitter/pseuds/Lilithisbitter
Summary: Three years after A Game of Shadows, Sherlock Holmes comes home. Watson however is not impressed. Written for the challenge Come at Once, a 24 Hour Fanfic challenge.





	

By the time I thought of checking the chair, he had already left. The only things to betray his arrival were the addition to my manuscript and the warmth on the chair. The rapidly fading warmth. I almost believed he was alive. And expected him to come back. And reality set in. If he were alive, why hadn't he come back? Moriarty was dead as was the network he spun. There was no need to jump. The damned fool knew I was in the next room. 

Besides that, the falls were so high that he would have been knocked out by the water on impact. And if not dashed upon the rocks, he would have drowned. An asthma inhaler does not save one from the water, so Mycroft's little joke was hardly appreciated. You've become rather sour, said Mary. Well, wife, dear, one does become sour toward the world. Reinchenbach burned what the war missed. And as sure a bullet toward my heart...

Dear God, I sound dramatic. Rung in drama. Dripping with sap. No wonder Holmes hates it. Good thing he's not around. It's a good thing Mary is not around either. If she could see what I became... well, Mary's not here and that's the end of that. Maybe I'll carry on our stories but I see little reason. 

There is a reason. 

A big reason. A bastard faked his death reason. 

"I'm here now, Watson." He said one day 

"You son is of a bitch." I spun around, whisky dropping from my outstretched fingers. 

Quick as ever, Holmes caught it. Ever the braggart. Ever missing the point. Ever missing the rage blooming on his friend's face. "I assume you would like to finish this." He handed the glass back to me, who promptly crushed it without wincing. Holmes however did wince. "I recommend that you sit promptly at once, Mother Hen. Even men of your standing have been known to..."

That was when I brought the whisky decanter hard on Holmes' head. 

"Faint." He finished before doing so himself. 

In hindsight I regret doing so, but three years, really. Apparently two in Tibet because he had his reasons. Which he refused to explain. I assume it's because his arm freely moving. Remember, he did have a large metal hook through the thing.

 

"I expected it to be the other way around," he said, sounding rather disappointed. His dark eyes darted around but for the most part he seemed fine. 

"Are you fine?" I asked.

"You have the nerve to wallop me with your vice and you have the gall to ask me that," he sniffed. 

Considering he'll do his best to try to embalm himself given the chance, that is almost a relief. Still, it wasn't the Holmes I knew. And I would bet every bit of money he was hiding something. "Food? You must be hungry."

"I was." He said flatly, "It is rather curious how a sharp rap on one's temple jars loose the appetite or rather what little one has. I don't regret saying that if you feed me, I shall be quite ill in your general vicinity. Three years has made you rather lemony."

To be honest, my life has been a series of unfortunate events. One after another. Look away. Not something that one is prepared to handle. "Mary died."

He went strangely solemn. 

"What? No jokes. No jabs about how marriage is bad for you, John? Oh dear me, Watson, how far you're getting."

"You're actually looking wasted. Mary made you look healthy. Harmless jab. 

"Poor aim." I snapped back. "She died in childbirth."

He was silent for a long time. I figured out later this was because he had a child out of wedlock with Simza, young William and suddenly he felt odd about telling me such. Why William, I asked? It's mine he said. 

"I'm sorry," he finally said, "I know she meant the world to you." 

"You also mean the world to me." I said. "You have no idea how much your loss broke my heart."

"Of course," he said almost mocking, "the machine doesn't. I wish you had never taken on her case. You get charmed by every lady and her pearls."

"They didn't exist."

"You thought they did. And then she was a mysterious untouchable rich heiress. And then, no treasure and she is poor as she ever was. You had to bring her down below you to raise her above you. Isn't that a bit twisted?"

"That isn't even what happened," I insisted. 

"You barely knew her.!" He snapped and winced. My friend paused as if thinking over his next words, eyes closed as he pondered them over his mind. "I'm sorry, but in one week, you're already proclaiming you love her and you drag me out of the flat so I can meet this woman you met for only a week. 

"How do you know about the week thing?"

"Wedding, your wife mentioned it. Giddy little thing, eager to tell the great detective about how she had snagged the doctor from under his fingers. Simply to brag or twist in the knife. Pick your poison." He paused again. "I am still however sorry for the loss of your own born son. Allow me to embrace you."

For several moments we hugged, my head buried in his hair which had gained several more streaks of white in its dark depths. It was familiar 

But I digress. It is a bad of mine. I once went off for several chapters about these Mormons in a desert. Not much bearing on the plot. I could have wrapped it up as because revenge as Holmes once put it. 

Of course he didn't I have a son of my own that because he believed that I would hate him. Quite falsely of course. There are things that he gets incorrect. I believe that he doesn't like to admit it but one day maybe one person besides Mycroft will admit his methods have short comings. He deduced my wife but does not read her expression. Her tension would have told him that the ring's absence was due to sorrow and not to hatred of its value. And that's generally how Holmes blunders into people's fists.

But surprisingly this was the one thing he didn't blunder into. "Take off your shirt."

He fluttered his lashes. "Dearest Watson, one would think you are trying you seduce me."

"I'm doing no such thing," I said to the answer of his rolled eyes. "I need to see if your wound has healed properly."

"I assure you it has."

"Still," I insisted. 

He huffed. Irritated, he removed his shirt. The scar was angry and raised, like a vivid red scar. But more surprising were the myriad scars that crossed his torso. "How." I asked. 

"Don't." He said warning. His mouth was set in the way so many soldiers are when they come back from the war but not all the way. 

"I get it," I said, "You get hurt and you're wounded for life. Right. Once burned, twice shy and all that. But they're scars is all. Just bits of tissue. And they fade."

"You think I don't know that? That cliche is horrible coming from the man who makes a point of hiding his war wounds."

Fine. That's what he was going for. I saw through those clever biting words. "Oh, so you think you've got me." 

"Yes, I do."

I would show him. First by removing my shirt. 

Even though my eyes were more on my own clothes and unfastening my pants, I could already sense his mouth dropping. "You clever duck, you." He said. "No. I suppose I don't. But you do know I'm obligated to touch them." He cocked his head to the side and tried to look innocent. "For science." 

His fingers, calloused from playing the violin, traced the scar on my shoulder and than accidentally brushed against the stiff peak of my left nipple. "Oops."

"Sure." I said. 

His other hand danced over my bad leg and than somehow found their way up my undergarments. "That's not even clo-se." I manage to squeak as his talented fingers closed around my prick and stroked. "How do you even?"

"All male school," he said as if that explained everything. He added an extra twist and licked my belly. 

"Thought you detested marriage."

"Yes. Stupid tradition. You'd be better off buying a potted plant. It would be an excellent shared activity. Like this activity that we are sharing at the moment."

"Coitus?"

"Fellatio, but I was thinking we'd work our way up." The look in his eyes was wild, so him. 

"What about you?" I asked, my hands skimming over his shoulders. In return his own tightened around my buttocks. "How do you figure into this?"

"Patience," said he, "I spent three years climbing my back out of hell. I don't intend on spending three stumbling minutes in heaven just to fall back out."

"Likewise," said I, pulling him to capture his mouth and work at the fastening of his trousers. "However, I do believe I was in a similar situation and I'm owed equal due."

"Than" said he, "I shall let my Boswell have his due."

We made our over to the sofa in a tangle of limbs and half stripped clothes. It didn't matter. All that mattered was the jut of his prick against mine. My hand found his and cupped it. He groaned even before I moved it lowered. 

"I see," said Holmes, "What a clever idea."

"Oh turn off your brain for once."

I knew he would insisted the cloud of information he existed in made it impossible. But if a dance could ease it, image what a little mutual masturbation could achieve. It might smooth the savage beast he called the attic of his brain. The moment our intertwined hands closed around his erection and mine, all cohesive thought had dissolve from his mind. By the time, his orgasm and mine rushed over us like an oncoming wave, "the storm" seemed to be a light breeze. 

"How's heaven looking?" I asked him as he dreamily hummed. 

"I have a son." Said he. 

"Oh? Virgin birth is it?"

"No, with Simza. You're not mad are you?" Holmes asked me as if he thought I would be. 

"Why would I be? Where is this baby?" 

"With Mycroft."

"So as safe as it can be."

"Are you suggesting I'd get run experiments on it like Gladstone?"

"Not suggesting, you cock, outright stating."

He sniffed. "I know the difference between dogs and babies." He paused for a moment. "When I retire I intend to keep bees." 

"A bee farmer."

"One doesn't farm bees."

And like that heaven was normal. Because he was in it.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt once burned, twice shy. Shameless includes reference to Jude Law's filmography. Because let's face it, Jude Law's Watson is secretly Gigolo Joe from AI and how often do we get to make the sex robot Watson joke in notes? Not often enough.


End file.
